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Comment by Crazyontap | Hacker News Reader

It's hard to believe that the author of this poem also wrote this :/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden

The White Man's Burden is definitely a dangerous poem, it's bad to uncritically spread its message of simple cultural superiority.

But lets not pretend that it is some off-the-rails racist screed. We still do try to export our cultural values to developing nations (e.g. women's education to Afghanistan, or elimination of FGM in Africa) and are sometimes resented for it. We should be pushed to champion those kinds of causes, even if they are thankless.

Now those cultural values certainly aren't spread in a vacuum; they are usually accompanied by other less-benevolent forms of imperialism. Exploitation isn't what Kipling is calling for; he is certainly racist, but he is trying to be benevolent.

Why? You don't think someone can have had excellent personal character while still being a product of a time and place that inculcated harmful group chauvinism? Might as well throw out all of Greek philosophy with that attitude.

This is the zeitgeist of today: no nuance, no complexity. One cannot be both good and bad in same lifetime. One cannot be both flawed and redemptive. Witness the crucifixion of Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Rudyard Kipling, and countless other writers from the past.

I don't see anyone crucifying anyone here, it's just you trying to stir shit where there's none tbh.

Perhaps you are right. But reading the link which OP provided, I was expecting to hear how terrible a man Kipling must have been to support racist imperialism regardless of the beauty he also produced. If I jumped the gun, I apologize.

I think it's fair to say he was quite a reactionary even for the standards of the time. In my opinion, that does not erase the beauty he produced, and neither does that beauty erase his less unsavory featured.

But yes I'm quite against the tendency to crucify dead people, which is annoyingly prevalent in some circles.

The systematic destruction of everything strong and good in the past is done on purpose to disorient and make people more open to dramatic, sudden change.

Even for his time he didn't an "excellent personal character". That being said I'm generally in favour of separating the author from the art and against putting people on a pedestal in general.

I think the first world war also changed him in this regard, but I may be wrong.

See the poem, (and play, and film adaptation - which is a moving depiction of his experience of his son being killed) my boy jack.

Although as for "product of his time" and WW1 poetry in general, remember that Wilfred Owen was writing around the same time and is very much ahead of many warmongers to this day. People are products of their circumstances, cultural and temporal.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decoru...

A friend of mine's great-whatever apparently confessed on his deathbed to having shot his commanding officer who had begun summarily executing retreating soldiers for deserting (i.e. not walking directly into a wall of machine gun fire)

That's an incredible story. Has it been recorded anywhere?

I have no idea, assuming it's even true.

I have this opinion of Churchill too. Should we solely praise him, absolutely not, was he still one of the great men of history, yes.

That being said the former viewpoint is still being elucidated to many people so I am not overly critical of those who express it too enthusiastically.

The Mythos of Churchill must be challenged, just as the good celebrated and analysed.

Very few people seem to know of Clement Attlee these days, which is probably a tragedy considering his influence on what really matters in Britain today.

Maybe you didn't read the actual poem or maybe you don't understand it, or maybe I'm misinterpreting your reason for sharing this with an implied concern. However it turns out, it should be clear that the poem itself is multi-layered. It is, to me, from the perspective of somebody who has the prescribed duty to apply their culture's ideals to a peoples not compatible; a lament of the perceived need to do so. It is (again, to me) clearly not some kind of racist screed... unless you read it with an eye to specific terms and associations without considering any context, either from the poem itself or from the circumstances leading to its writing.

Look beyond the cover.

I can't edit on mobile otherwise I would have, but...

A very related work, if assuming the "imperialist" interpretation of The White Man's Burden, is the documentary Empire of Dust[0]. In this, a Chinese man is sent to a region in Africa to help build up various capabilities and the subsequent philosophical and practical issues that arise. I highly recommend it, but only if you (the watcher) can set aside your preexisting notions on the topics addressed.

[0]: (hopefully this works) https://vimeo.com/371805969

This is, in fact, quite relevant. The poem "If" is, largely, an endorsement of traditional norms of masculinity, and the same sort of far-right conservatism is the source of the racist prejudices in The White Man's Burden--and in his other famous work, The Jungle Book.

In fact, the connection between the poem "If" and colonialism is even more direct:

> To take one example, Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If…’ (1895), which acts as a guide to manhood for his son, takes inspiration from colonial administrator Leander Starr Jameson, presenting him as the ideal man.

Source: https://projects.history.qmul.ac.uk/thehistorian/2017/05/12/...

Edit: the point is, it is very unsurprising that the author of The White Man's Burden would also have written this particular poem.

> The poem "If" is, largely, an endorsement of traditional norms of masculinity

Yes, and all the better for it.

Thank you. I think this idea that there's a perfect ideal to strive for is present in all culture. From someone educated in "Western" values but living with "Eastern" tradition (simplifying a lot here), I've (personally) always read Kipling as very pretentious, and a relic of an older time. However seeing how often it comes up in forums and how people always laud it when it does, I think it strikes a chord with a certain mindset (that flies past my head unfortunately), and by that it will be a poem that continues to be a guiding light. My belief is that people however should understand the context of something, even more so if it is a text that they treasure.

The Jungle Book is the best children's book ever written. I'd like to see a study of adult life outcomes based on whether their parents read them The Jungle Book. I think it would be revealing.

He did. I still like Kipling anyway, even with his feet of clay.

As a counterpoint, may I suggest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Man%27s_Burden as a variation on the theme.

Take up the Black Man's burden -- Send us the best ye breed!

virtue signaling...so 2021

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